


to feel blood on someone else’s hands

by Wolvesandwerewolves



Series: death bed [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26171656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolvesandwerewolves/pseuds/Wolvesandwerewolves
Summary: The first time Klaus possesses someone is traumatic, to say the least.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: death bed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900552
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69





	to feel blood on someone else’s hands

**Author's Note:**

> sup so it’s 2 am yet again bc apparently this is what i do now. i take sleeping pills and then i do not sleep. 
> 
> wasn’t really planning on writing this and then I did. Uh here goes
> 
> i might edit the ending in the morning, not super happy but like..im tired and also a baby. 
> 
> also I honestly was not really planning on starting another freaking klaus series when my other two also are not done but like. ive said it before and I’ll say it again. i do not have any self control. also currently operating with one single brain cell, on loan to my brother :/ it’s ok

It’s been a year since Klaus learned to die, all on his own without the use of drugs. It’s January again. The streets are frozen over with a thin layer of ice, black against the dark roads, illuminated by too-bright street lamps. The sky is deep brown-grey above him, clouds weighed down and heavy with promises of more storms, come morning. The sidewalks are dirty with muddy snow, trampled on and pushed to the sides in the rush of each and every day. There are half-ghosted footprints indented in the slushy, salt-crusted piles of it.

It’s quiet. Winter always seems so soft compared to summer. It’s something of an illusion, because winter is always harder to survive in, Klaus thinks. Or maybe it’s just him. 

He and Ben are walking through the silent streets, aimlessly wondering what to do. It’s midnight. Most of the city sleeps on, except for the exciting night life he is trying so hard to stay away from: the bright, purple lights of the clubs, flashing with images of dark bodies moving, dancing to the vibration of the music. Colorful pills and sneaky hands, lines of coke in the bathroom. Men and women, their mouths on his, hot with whiskey-laced breath that fogs the backseat windows of someone else’s car. 

He’s been clean for almost four months now. He’s noticed, since that cold, sweaty night, when he came back to himself ill and tired and bruised, that he’s changed. He does not need drugs to sleep, anymore. 

The ghosts sometimes still surround his bed at night, but no longer do they beg him. His deaths have stolen the voices of the already-dead, it seems. They’re nothing more than quiet hallucinations, bodies of smoke that swirl and dissipate when he moves through them. It was something that had taken some getting used to, in the beginning, but he knows this is, comparably, easy. He does not miss being a child, ruining his sisters’ dolls with dark markers to emulate the faces of those haunting him, or whispering words spoken to him in the dead of night, learning their meaning when he should not have for years to come. 

He’s older, now. They don’t scare him as easily, anymore.

Still. Sometimes their presence is enough to scratch at his skin, tug at his hair and it’s then that he feels the need to shed out of his own skin, slither away like a snake and leave them all behind. But Ben always likes it when he’s sober, and he promised, this time he would try. Just like he promised at the rehab center before, that it was different, Ben, _for real this time._

He’s trying.

At the very least, Klaus needed to get out of that cramped hotel room, the wheeze of the heater and the creak of the bed, every time he shifted uncomfortably. The pale, shadowed faces, crowded around and blocking the view of the glowing tv screen. There were only three, tonight. They would not stop staring. 

So Klaus left. He and Ben have been walking for close to thirty minutes, now. He knows the city well, but on nights like these, sometimes he just wants to get lost in the mazes of darkened alleyways, littered with trash and faded orange construction cones. 

“Where are we going?” Ben asks. 

His hood is up tonight, as if to protect him from the snow falling, even as each flake passes through him. His hands are in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. He doesn’t sound bored, though, even if he looks it. Klaus supposes he’s probably used to this, by now. 

He shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, voice high and cheeky with practiced humor. “Your mom’s house?”

“Very funny,” Ben says. “That’s in the opposite direction.”

“Oh, is it? What a shame. We’ll have to turn back, then, Ben. Do you think Luther would be glad to see us? I mean, even we have to be better at conversation than Dad.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No? What do you think they talk about together? Here, let me try.”

“Klaus,” Ben says, and now he sounds almost annoyed. 

Klaus straightens his spine, rests one arm against the dip of his lower back, raises his other hand and closes two fingers together in a circle. He squints one eye half closed, peers through the fake monocle pressed against his brow. 

“Klaus,” Ben says, again. 

“Number One,” he says, voice slightly higher and mockingly gruff. “There is a mission!”

“Klaus.”

“It is of upmost importance!” 

“Hey, Klaus!”

“Many lives depend on it!”

“Klaus,” Ben snaps, and grabs his arms. He’s gotten cocky, since he learned he could. Somehow it only fills him with pride, and Klaus bursts out laughing, doubling over and breaking his character. 

“Oh, come on, I haven’t even gotten to Luther’s bit, yet!”

“I’m serious,” Ben says, and roughly turns him around. 

Oh.

At the edge of the street, a young man lies in a fetal position, on a bed of red stained snow. Above him is another man, older, fists streaked with wet blood. 

Even from here Klaus can tell the younger man is close to death. He’s not sure how he knows. Instinct, maybe. Something in his body that shadows and fades, pricks at the skin of Klaus’s neck and slithers down his spine. 

“I’m retired,” he tells Ben.

Ben shakes his head. He never listens. “We have to help.”

_I don’t want to,_ he thinks, and deliberately does not feel bad for it. He’s helped enough. Saved so many lives in his childhood they should carry over to his adulthood. He deserves a break. He can’t be, and doesn’t want to be, responsible for every awful thing he sees. Not like Luther or Diego or even Ben. 

“Oh, come on!” Klaus whines, desperate as his brother walks away from him. “We’re not heroes! I put the mask down years ago!”

“So what? You’re just going to watch somebody become a ghost?” 

Klaus groans. He misses drugs, and the haze of bad decisions that left him feeling numb and happy. He wants to just be a person and nothing more, sometimes. He’s tired.

“Please, Klaus?” Ben says, and he’s stopped walking, now. He’s facing him again, hood down, and he looks so sad. So young and sad. He only died a few years ago, but—Klaus will always be older, now. He’s dead. 

Klaus sighs, rolls his head back towards the dark night sky and curses at the heavens, if any exist. 

“I hate you,” he tells Ben, running to catch up. 

“No, you don’t,” Ben says.

There’s so much blood. It soaks into the wet snow, melting and seeping away from the body on the ground. Red trails down his forehead, smudging around his eye and darkening his wet lashes, skin bruised purple and swelling. His hair is thick with it, flat and plastered to the skin of his neck and cheek. 

The man above him is still grunting, slamming his fists into his frozen, limp face, straightening and kicking stained boots into the prone area of his stomach. He’s killing him. 

For a moment, Klaus almost forgets that he’s a ghost. He left his body on the soft sheets of the hotel, lamp turned off and curtains closed. He shut the heater off before he drifted away, left the tv on and glowing in the dark room, locked the door twice and hung the sign on the knob.

He acts on instinct.

He lunges forward, grabbing at the man as his foot draws back, and then—

And then _everything_. 

Klaus does not feel as a ghost. It’s a different genre of numb he gets from being high, but numb all the same.

Except he’s so cold. Everything is too much. Winter is far too harsh. He can’t breathe, and should not need to. 

“Klaus,” Ben says, somewhere in front of him, except the only thing he sees is blood underneath his fingernails.

His hands aren’t his. He doesn’t remember his palms or knuckles being this rough. The skin is pink, split open and red, fingers wet where they poke out of his fingerless gloves. The bones inside are stiff and bruised. His hands ache.

The blood on them is so warm it burns.

“Klaus, breathe,” Ben says.

He hears a laugh, feels it as it tears out of his throat, but he doesn’t recognize the sound. It’s deep and biting. Hysterical, but not his. He’s not laughing. He can’t tell if he’s laughing.

“It’s okay,” Ben says. 

Klaus doesn’t feel like himself. He feels foreign. His brain is a tv, his eyes are the screen and he’s watching but he can’t make sense of this movie. He’s not himself.

He thinks he’s in the middle of a panic attack. 

“You’re fine,” Ben says. “Breathe.”

Klaus gasps. He feels the sting in his lungs. He’s alive. 

He’s kneeling on the ground, hunched over with his hands in his lap. His knees burn, jeans soaked and heavy where they sit against the snow. The coat he’s wearing is too tight, buttoned up all the way to the neck, and his scarf is wrapped around him like a noose, it’s suffocating. He’s freezing. 

He feels tears on his face, hot and uncomfortable. He wipes them away, trembling, but his fingers are wet, too, and he feels the blood thick against his face. His smooth face, where there should be a beard, but there’s not. 

He’s possessing someone. 

“Are you okay?” Ben asks. Somehow he sounds older, when he never will be again. But his voice is. He’s reassuring. Gentle.

Klaus shakes his head. It feels too heavy, swaying on his neck like he isn’t used to. 

“Okay,” Ben says, like he didn’t just say no. 

Except, he didn’t. He doesn’t want to speak. 

“Can you stand?”

He doesn’t want to do that, either.

“Klaus, I need you to stand up.”

_No_ , he thinks and shakes his head again. Tears fall down his face still. He doesn’t wipe them away this time. His temples pulse, and his breath is shaky and uneven. 

He’s tired.

“Please, Klaus,” Ben says. He sounds young again. He wonders how old this body is. “It’s okay, I promise.”

Klaus closes his eyes. He feels dizzy as he moves, and the world feels off when he blinks again. The snow is too far away. He’s too tall. 

“Come on,” Ben says. He takes one step backwards, doesn’t take his eyes off him as he moves. 

Klaus’s boots crunch against the snow as he walks away. 

—————————————————————-

They check into the same hotel Klaus left his own body at, so far away and in the same building.

He’s not sure how they got here or how they got in. He feels like sections of his brain are missing. Not his brain—this brain—he is not inside himself.

Klaus thinks he vaguely remembers Ben telling him to show him his license, and to wipe the blood off on the scarf. He remembers signing something, muscle memory that wasn’t his. But he doesn’t remember how he got the key card in his hand, and he’s not sure how long he’s been standing at the elevator, waiting. Just waiting.

“Press the button, Klaus.”

He blinks. He’s alone, but Ben is next to him. The reflection in the shiny metal doors is unfamiliar. He feels sick and looks away. 

“It’s floor six,” Ben says, gently. “Press it. Or let me. But you have to let me, I can’t without you, okay?” 

Klaus nods. He closes his eyes and thinks of the first time Ben became whole again, when he threw a pen at him and it bounced off his chest. They were arguing. He can’t remember what it was about. 

“We’re here,” Ben says. 

Klaus blinks his eyes open again. They’re in the hallway, now. Standing in front of a darkly painted door. The number on the side says _607._ He thought their room was _203,_ earlier. 

It was, he remembers. He left himself there and now he’s someone else.

“Okay,” Ben says, even though Klaus doesn’t think he said anything. He wonders if this body even has a voice. He doesn’t want to know. “Follow me. I’m right here.”

Then he turns, looks Klaus right in the face, and steps backwards through the door. It swallows him slowly, face and body disappearing beneath the wood like quicksand. Or water. He’s not sure. 

But Klaus can’t follow him. He has to use the keycard. It’s in his hand. Not his hand, his—other hand. 

He still feels so tall.

He watches as the black box above the handle beeps and the light turns green. The handle stings his palm, he’s still cold, and the door is heavy. But he swings it open, and Ben is right there, waiting for him. He didn’t leave.

Ben sighs. “Okay. You’re covered in blood, and probably freezing. Right, Klaus?”

Klaus nods. He’s still cold. He doesn’t feel good.

“Go shower.”

Fuck, yes. 

The idea is _so nice._ He wants to strip, scrub at his skin until the blood is his own, watch it swirl around the drain. He wants to breathe in steam, and smoke, he wants a cigarette, and to let the hot water run over every inch of him, burn him in a way that isn’t so cold and awful. He wants to get into bed, and feel the soft sheets against his skin, and he wants to fall asleep and become a ghost again.

He feels himself take off his coat, drop it on the floor and freezes. 

Klaus does not want to get undressed. He does, but he can’t stomach the thought. This isn’t his body. It isn’t his skin. It isn’t his anything, and he doesn’t want to see any part of it, or feel it without the heavy weight of his rough, suffocating clothes. He doesn’t want—he can’t—

He gets into the shower fully clothed. 

“Okay,” Ben says, as he turns the water on. “You can do that. Take your shoes off.” 

_Not my shoes,_ he thinks, but Ben is right. He toes them off, kicks them away from the shower door, then peels his socks away from his sweaty, itchy skin, soaked with water and disgusting. He throws them to the corner.

His feet aren’t his. The toes are too long. And he remembers painting his own toenails blue, before he died. This man’s are plain. He closes his eyes again. 

Klaus wants to be himself. He wonders if the other man he tried to save is alive or not. 

It’s probably too cold out.

He stands in the shower for a long time. He keeps his eyes closed the entire time he’s in there. The water adds weight to his shoulders, the fabric hanging on him heavily. It’s uncomfortable. But the water is warm and he’s still so cold. So he doesn’t move. 

Eventually, his fingers begin to prune. His palms itch. He does not towel off as he steps out. He walks out of the bathroom, feels the hard tile floor beneath his feet, then the thin, itchy carpet.

The layout is the same as his own hotel room. It’s the same place. He almost expects to see himself lying on the bed, dead and waiting patiently. 

Klaus isn’t there. 

He drops himself onto the empty bed, doesn’t even bother to move the blankets first. He’s soaking and uncomfortable and quickly becoming cold again. 

He wants to die. 

He wonders if him dying will kill the person he’s possessing. Maybe the man’s spirit is already gone. Klaus doesn’t feel him here, sharing this body with him. He doesn’t recognize any ghost as the man in the reflection from the mirror. Maybe he died the moment Klaus stepped inside his body. Maybe he killed him. 

Maybe he’s walking around in a dead man’s bones, breathing with his lungs. 

He shudders. Everything is cold again.

“Let me help,” Ben says. He thinks he said something earlier, but he can’t think of what it is.

Klaus closes his eyes. He thinks of how he feels whenever he makes Ben solid—to punch him in the arm, to high five him, to hug him and fight him when they argue. To swing his arm over his shoulder and hang on him when Ben is trying to read, to poke him when he’s trying to say something important, to put his feet on his lap when he’s trying to ignore him. 

He hears the cough of the heater being kicked on, hears the squeak of a closet door after, and then feels air rushing towards his face, cold, and a light blanket covers him up. 

Ben places a hand on his shoulder. “Go to sleep, Klaus.”

He does.

**Author's Note:**

> goodnight I love you and im shutting up now
> 
> xoxo


End file.
